Hara-kiri Awards for Journalists?

If readers were forced to make a choice which group would be more reprehensible:
the Germans who invaded Paris or the French citizens who chose to help them once they arrived, which group would they want to denounce more?

The Germans believed they were super-patriots helping their country’s leader. The collaborators chose to abandon their country’s principles and throw their lot in with the “conquerors.” One of the most newsworthy examples of the collaborators who were found guilty of treason for their actions was Robert Brasillach and it is in his honor that we say we hold American journalists, who are retroactively endorsing Bush’s war crimes, in lower esteem than the Bush Junta war criminals because (at least) the fanatical Republicans (just like the Nazis) did not betray their principles. The Sunday morning propagandists, who recently became accomplices in Bush’s deceit and lies by belittling the idea of a torture investigation, were betraying the code of honor that was endorsed by practitioners (such as Edward R. Murrow) of their (in their own inflated opinion of themselves) profession.
Recently Crooks and Liars and the Brad Blog have noted that the Sunday morning gasbags have belittled the idea that Bush and his henchmen should be tried for their various war crimes. Apparentlyl they don’t even see the need for a torture investigation.

How would the American public have reacted if the Germany journalists in 1945 suggested that holding the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial was an overreaction by a victorious military and that the Hitler gang should be put out to pasture, but not have to face the ordeal of public humiliation and punishment for their sincere efforts to promote Germany’s economic development via some well-intentioned land grabs?

For any America media personality to suggest that it would be in America’s best interests to grant de facto pardons to Bush, Chenney, et al, by dispensing with any criminal investigations and trials is as absurd as the concept of some leading French existentialist intellectuals suggesting that the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials were an egregious example of overreaction by a victorious military force. Not bloody well likely, eh?

Sartre and Camus may have disagreed over the death sentence delivered in Robert Brasillach’s case, but there can be no doubt they held the man in utter disdain for what he did.

John Amato and Brad Friedman, as journalists, do well to not do any editorializing, by peppering their stories with adjectives that convey opinion such as the words “reprehensible” and or “heinous,” but since this is a column there are no such restraints and we will indulge in a bit of speculation about how much these loathsome individuals deserve to be given this years (imaginary) hari-kiri Awards for traitorous conduct by media stars (who have the temerity to call themselves “journalists.”)

It is bad enough that the on-air personalities did not challenge Bush before the invasion of Iraq. They did not seize on the “where did it go?” factor of the missing WMD’s after the invasion. When they are tipped to the possibility that millions of Iraqi citizens may be being slaughtered in the various air raids being conducted, they stand by silently (much like the folks around the Nazi concentration camps who didn’t get too curious about the trainloads of folks being taken in to places such as Buchenwald) and say nothing. When a town like Fallujah is bombed into ruble, they say nothing about that recalling the fury the world used to denounce Reinhard Heydrich’s endorsement of retribution for resistance efforts. As for torturing prisoners, the Sunday Quisling clones take about the same attitude toward waterborading as the Catholic Church did during the Inquisition.

Now they want to advocate that, with a world crying for justice (outside the USA), it’s time to turn the country’s attention to more mundane matters such as the memorial services for Michael Jackson.

Sunday morning fame-whores should be an embarrassment to even the smallest Journalism school in the USA and the Columbia Journalism Review should be as strong in their denunciation of these suck-ups as Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus were of Robert Brasillach.

If the members of the Bush Junta are going to be tried for war crimes, shouldn’t some of the media personalities, who added their enthusiasm to the Bush effort to trample American ideals, also be put on trial, just as many French were after the United States liberated that occupied country in World War II?

Do you think Dennis Miller would like to put a proponent of that suggestion on his radio program? If not, why not? Doesn’t he always say he likes to air both sides of an issue and then endorse the conservative viewpoint?

Recently Miller suggested that the United States should refrain from giving any reasons for starting new wars. At least Hitler had the decency to offer a fraudulent excuse for invading Poland. Why waste time on phony excuses, eh, Dennis? Is that the Genghis Khan approach to spin?

These Sunday morning clowns should be given a nice shiny unused Japanese hari-kari sword and a contract to appear on a new and extremely gruesome reality TV show for “journalist” who have betrayed the principles of journalism, helped deceive rather than inform their country’s citizens, and made a mockery of the founding fathers high regard for a free press and the Constitution. Just think of the ratings! What’s not to like about that suggestion?

This column’s closing quote has to be the most famous line from the movie “Network” “I want you to get up right now and go to the window . . . and yell: ‘<a href =http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dib2-HBsF08>I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore</a>!’”

In an effort to be “fair and balanced” the disk jockey will, for members of the Republican talking point bucket brigade, play Tammy Wynett’s “Stand by your man” and for the people who remember that Edward R. Murrow risked his career to fight a bully, will play the best Bush song (done by Johnny Cash) ever, “God’s gonna cut you down.”

It’s time for us to say Sayonara. Have a week full of real patriotic moments like the one when Ricky Blaine told the band’s conductor to play the Marseillaise (belated Happy Bastille Day.)

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